Social Media Management Blunders to Avoid

Social Media Management Blunders to Avoid

Unless you’ve deliberately avoided the social media and social media management revolution, then you probably already know how to post, comment, upload photos and interact on Facebook (or other preferred social sites) like a champ. Social media management is a household term everyone seems to be familiar with!

However, that’s where it gets tricky for businesses and marketers. Because the basic mechanics of social media can be fairly simple, it’s widely misunderstood that simply posting, liking and sharing is a social business strategy. Business owners hand their social media management over to employees, interns and others who are comfortable “posting” – and then are disappointed when this marketing “strategy” does absolutely nothing for their business.

The result? A business owner who misses out on the opportunity to turn their social pages into a sales building tool, and an overall skepticism about social media’s effect on business in general. In other words, too many business owners are finding themselves disillusioned while their competitors who followed a few strategic rules about social media management are cashing in.

I got the chance to sit down and talk to George Healy, our expert social media strategist here at SMASH Solutions. George has consulted for a number of high-profile clients and national campaigns – and as a recent client of ours said “when someone needs a real social strategy that works, George is the only one to see.”

George pointed out that if businesses would stop making these three common social media blunders, they’d save themselves a lot of time, frustration and enjoy a better ROI.

Don’t Start Too Many Social Channels at Once

“A lot of businesses get excited and start ten social platforms at the same time.” says Healy. “In actuality it’s better not to have a social platform activated than to have one that’s only occassionally updated. A good strategy is to create a lot of content you think you’d put on a social media channel in advance, and not activate the new social channel until you have a month’s worth of posts in the bank.”

Don’t Be Lazy With Your Posts

George tells all SMASH clients that posting the “exact same content to all social media channels seems like a time-saver, but it can be an engagement killer.” (FYI engagement = potential customers) As George explained “there’s a good amount of fan overlap between various channels and if your fan base sees the exact same content, odds are they’re only going to engage in one place – and the other platforms will suffer. You can, however, repurpose content by making a change or a tweak. For example use the same picture, but with a different caption for Facebook than Pinterest.”

Don’t Just Work From Within

“While its important to have a coherent voice for your brand, it’s not enough to just create content about what you’re company is good at.” How do you combat the me, me, me convo on social? Healy says to “examine your competitors, examine what they’re doing on social media and see if you can adapt their successes to what you do and avoid the traps they fell into.” For example, if you see a competitor’s Facebook page that had great engagement, but the engagement dwindled over time and all they post are pictures, then you can deduce they didn’t have a good variety of posts (asking the fans questions, sharing interesting links, posting videos etc.) and avoid that same mistake. A huge part of expert social media management is simply avoiding social media blunders by observing your competitors.

By avoiding these common social media mistakes made by companies, your business can have a thriving presence on social media. Turn those followers into loyal customers – and stop giving your social media duties to just anyone who knows how to share a post! Don’t have the time to manage your social yourself? No problem. SMASH Social offers a wide variety of social media management packages to fit any business and budget. (One on one consultations with George are available on a limited basis.)